Roberts: Alarm over voter fraud is misplaced

Hardly anyone noticed last spring when Jon Husted, the Republican secretary of state in Ohio, issued a report on the 2012 election. Out of 5.63 million ballots cast in that state, he identified 135 possible cases of voter fraud.

Those aren’t proven cases, just possible. Even so, that comes to a maximum fraud rate of .002397 percent, or one case for every 41,704 voters. The real rate is probably much lower, because allegations of fraud “almost always prove to be inflated or inaccurate,” according to the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School.

These figures show once again an undeniable fact. Election fraud is not — repeat NOT — a significant problem in this country. As the Brennan Center, which tracks the issue closely, puts it: “Voter fraud — votes knowingly cast by ineligible individuals — is exceedingly rare; one is more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit voter fraud.”

And yet Republican governors and legislators refuse to recognize this reality. In the name of combatting a nonexistent problem, they continue to pass laws that make it harder for citizens to vote.

But then the pretext of voter fraud is, well, just a fraud. The real reason for these laws is completely obvious. Republicans want to limit the impact of groups that tend to vote for Democrats: the young, the poor, and racial minorities.

During last fall’s election, a Republican official in Pennsylvania admitted what Al Gore might call an “inconvenient truth”: Election law changes had one goal — electing Mitt Romney president. Steve Schmidt, a former strategist for John McCain, made the same point on MSNBC: “Voting fraud ... doesn’t really exist when you look deeply at the question. It’s part of the mythology now in the Republican Party that there’s widespread voter fraud across the country. In fact, there’s not.”

That’s why it was so important for Attorney General Eric Holder to file suit against a package of laws signed in August by North Carolina’s Republican governor, Pat McCrory. One law requires voters to show a photo ID. Others shorten the period for early voting by a week, end same-day registration, and reject any ballots that are cast in the wrong polling place.

For close to 50 years, seven states and parts of four others, including North Carolina, were covered by the Voting Rights Act and had to pre-clear changes in election law with the Justice Department or a federal court. But after the Supreme Court threw out the “pre-clearance” provision last spring, North Carolina was one of several states that moved quickly to enact new restrictions. The court, however, kept intact a separate section of the act that allows Justice to challenge voting rules that deliberately discriminate based on race. Intentional bias is hard to prove, but Holder insists the Feds can meet the test.

“The Justice Department,” he said, “expects to show that the clear and intended effects of these changes would contract the electorate and result in unequal access to participation in the political process on account of race.”

Statistics reinforce Holder’s claim. Blacks comprise 22 percent of the North Carolina electorate but 34 percent of those without government-issued IDs. They also account for 41 percent of voters who used same-day registration, and 29 percent of early voters.

A case can be made for a photo ID rule, as long as the rule is reasonable. (Texas’ law, for example, is not reasonable, since a gun permit counts but a student ID does not.) But there is absolutely no connection between preventing fraud and limiting early voting days. Or ending same-day registration.

Dale Ho of the American Civil Liberties Union is correct in telling USA Today, “North Carolina is engaging in a blatant attempt to make it harder for hundreds of thousands of eligible voters to cast a ballot.”

In recent years, Republicans have out-worked Democrats on governor and state legislative races, and as a result they’ve been able to draw favorable Congressional districts that maximize their political leverage. Democratic House candidates won about 1.3 million more votes than their Republican opponents last year, but the GOP still captured a 33-seat majority. Their ability to shut down the government is a direct result of their shrewd strategy.

Winning elections, however, does not give the majority absolute power. They should not be able to use their victories to undermine democracy and restrict the right to vote. That’s unfair and un-American. But that’s precisely what Republicans are doing in North Carolina, and the courts should stop them.

ADVISORY: Users are solely responsible for opinions they post here and for
following agreed-upon rules of civility. Posts and
comments do not reflect the views of this site. Posts and comments are
automatically checked for inappropriate language, but readers might find some
comments offensive or inaccurate. If you believe a comment violates our rules,
click the "Flag as offensive" link below the comment.

Comment viewing options

Sort Comments

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

The certified difference in votes had Franken with 225 more votes than Coleman. If there were 135 fraudulent votes, that would account for 60% of the difference. Yes, voter fraud occurs, and yes, it can make a difference. Why do those like Cokie ignore the relevant numbers? It's easy to create a miniscule percentage like Cokie did, but she either misses the true issue or worse, knowingly omits it because it highlights just how narrow some elections have been and how much a small amount of voter fraud could affect the outcome.

5, a few more elections that were even closer;
1974, Hew Hampshire, US Senate seat, won by 2 votes.
1984, Indianas 8th Congressional District, won by 4 votes.
1995, Conneticuts 2nd Congressional District, won by 21 votes.
2006, Oklahoma house 25th district, won by 2 votes.

Every vote counts and I do not want my valid vote negated by another uncertified, invalid vote. Verification is every bit as important as voting.

Check out the Lyndon Johnson elected to the House of Representatives in 1937! Very suspicious! Ballot box found after the election was over moved him to be the winner! Smacking the same as a Franken scenario!

Any fradulent vote is a bad thing, which is why electoral bodies at all levels have some sort of rules in place to prevent that from happening. However, when new rules are imposed to further reduce fraudulent voting, they must also be analyzed to determine if they will have the effect of disqualifying votes cast by qualified voters and if they will prevent people entitled to vote from doing so. The magnitude of the beneficial effects must be weighed against that of the undesired side-effects to decide if the cure is better or worse than the disease being treated, lest we incur a Pyrrhic victory. And, of course, motives are always called into question and accusations made, although proof may be hard to come by.

Aw c'mon 5 , this laws are are not about preventing 135npossible fraudelent votes in the entire state of Minnesota. I doubt a Voter ID law would have prevented most opf those anyway. Its about the much larger number of citizens that don't have the proper credentials, re more apt to vote Democrat, some of whom will just give up and not aquire the proper documents.

In some States they have reduced the number of polling places and reduced or eliminated early voting after iot was determined Democrats were more apt to utilize early voting. I don't know tghe details but in North Carolina they changes rules regarding students voting making it difficult for students at a predominantly Black University to vote without returning to their hometown in which they were probably no longer entitled to vote.

Just wonder how many of you would support a law with real teeth. A United States ID with photo , finger prints. It would carry biographical information, criminal record etc. Would be required to carry at all times by every person in the country.

The iceberg principle is the principle that crime, abuse, fraud, and etcetera, which are reported, are just the tip of the iceberg and (like child abuse) what actually occurs is much larger. That is because those doing the abuse do whatever they can to hide the abuse.

So, if the secretary of state for Ohio found 135 cases of voter fraud, there could easily be a thousand(s) or more cases that were hidden well enough they were not detected.

Considering how easy it is to register to vote in states like California that automatically send in a voter registration application whenever you get or make changes to their driver’s license. And California recently made it legal for illegal aliens to get drivers licenses, all of whom by law will automatically have a voter registration application sent in. Then it will be up to the local county clerk/voter registrar to do background checks on all those applications to determine if the applicant is a citizen or not.

You crummie progressive party slugs want it only your way. Shout its the law of the land when it fits your needs. Cry foul if it is not part of your stinking agenda. Its all for the good ol gang of thugs in the white house, and the 47%er slugs.
( bubba have a nice day rover)

"So, if the secretary of state for Ohio found 135 cases of voter fraud"

He found 135 cases of voter irregularities. All but 22 were found to be people registered in 2 states after relocating. The report also never stated the political parties the votes went for.

If you want to exploit the system "stuffing the ballot box" is not the weakest most exploitable point . It would take in most cases 10's of thousands of falsified ballots to affect the outcome. I said most because of course there are exceptions. The most exploitable point would be before or after the ballots are cast. Code in the computers, the bribing of officials, etc.

Getting 100,000 people to cast false ballots just isn't feasible. But voter suppression is, and the G.O.P. have got that down to a science. Including voter I.D., And purging voter rolls of undesirables.

@buck
You do realize you are most likely a 47%er right?

" Shout its the law of the land when it fits your needs. Cry foul if it is not part of your stinking agenda"

"The study, conducted over the last 10 months by a consortium of eight news organizations assisted by professional statisticians, examined numerous hypothetical ways of recounting the Florida ballots. Under some methods, Mr. Gore would have emerged the winner; in others, Mr. Bush. But in each one, the margin of victory was smaller than the 537- vote lead that state election officials ultimately awarded Mr. Bush."

Less than 537 votes, not tens of thousands. Of course, if Vice-President Al Gore had won his home state rather than then Governor George W. Bush, his lose in Florida would not have mattered.

Less than 537 votes made the difference in who became president.

If 113 people were registered in two states and took advantage of it and voted in two states, and they were just the tip of the iceberg of those who could vote in two states, just how big of a difference could they have made in a close election. Then multiply that by fifty states.

If only 22 people were fraudulently registered in Ohio and took advantage of it, and they were just the tip of the iceberg of those who voted in Ohio, just how big of a difference could they have made in a close election. Then multiply that by fifty states.

Chicago Tribune Reporter William "Bill" Mullen, who had a hand in three of the paper's coveted Pulitzer Prizes, is retiring after 45 years.

Mr. Mullen gained fame in the 1970s for his work uncovering voter fraud before traveling the world as a foreign correspondent covering the Vietnam War, SALT Treaties, OPEC and famine in Africa. In recent years, he has stayed closer to home, writing about the city's museums, scientific discoveries and dinosaurs.

In 1972, Mr. Mullen, a Wisconsin native, caught the attention of editors for his dogged work as a night police reporter.

It was about that time that Cook County Republicans suspected something wasn't right in the Board of Elections office. It had long been known that the Democratic Machine was stealing election votes, but nobody knew how it was being done.

The Cook County Republican Party arranged for Mr. Mullen to work undercover in the Chicago Election Board City Hall office to see if he could find out what the Democrats were doing.

"I would find excuses to nose through all kinds of files, trying to find out how elections got stolen," he told me. When he discovered primary election ballot applications signed all in the same hand with the same pen, he said he realized election judges "were waiting until the polls closed and taking names of people who didn't vote and then voting for them."

To get the ballot applications out of City Hall, he says, "I had to stuff them down the front of my pants and go to the Tribune. They'd have a bunch of photographers lined up to take photos of each document and then I'd stuff them back down my pants and return them. Then we knocked on doors and told people we thought their names had been forged." The voters confirmed the forgeries and the paper won a Pulitzer for the reporting in 1973.

The story so angered then-Mayor Richard J. Daley that editors worried he would have Mr. Mullen indicted for theft, he says. "They told me to get out of town until the mayor cooled off, so I bought a Pan Am 'Round the World' Ticket."

It would be the beginning of an exciting career as an international reporter.
Close quote.

The New York Times did its own analysis of how mistaken overvotes might have been caused by confusing ballot designs. It found that the butterfly ballot in heavily Democratic Palm Beach County may have cost Gore a net 6286 votes, and the two page ballot in similarly Democratic Duval County may have cost him a net 1999 votes, each of which would have made the difference by itself. The rest of the media consortium did not consider these because there could be no clear determination of a voter's intent. Separate analyses suggest that confusion over the butterfly ballots may have cost a Gore victory by perhaps a few thousand votes.

This kind of fraud is one that a voter id law would do nothing to prevent.

In fact he committed the fraud by stealing ballots to prove he could do it. All while being paid by the Illinois Republican party. He just barely escaped having fraud charges brought up against himself. So in fact in that case it was the Cook County Republican party committing the fraud.

Obama and his thugs have shut down government.
They planned it this way so they could blame the GOP Obama and his handlers will cheat in any way they can to win the 2014 elections for Obamas 2016. Me, a47% er not on your life. You 47%ers lap up all the crap Obama and his thugs fed you and beg for more.

if an investigative reporter "illegally" takes fake, criminally created ballots to prove that the democratic party and their supporters are committing voter fraud, then the democratic party and their supporters did not commit fraud because the reporter that proved they committed fraud committed fraud instead of the democratic party and their supporters.

So I guess fraud is only fraud as long as it is not discovered and when it is discovered it becomes what, unfraud.

is that there is much screaming about the poor people and the minorities not being able to get a free photo id because it is just too hard for them but by God they can figure out how to get on a computer or get someplace , someway to sign up for Obama care' Fill out and sign something to get a subsidy. Or maybe they can't and we won't have to worry about all the uninsured....wanna bet.